Marginal nature is found in urban wastelands such as neglected creeks, wastewater treatment ponds, vacant lots, road and rail waysides, brownfields, fencerows, dumps, and alleyways. What emerges in this wastespace is the unintended product of human activity and nature's unflagging expressiveness, which I call Marginal Nature.

Saturday, January 17, 2015

Where They Lived

Thomas Hardy, 1840 - 1928

Dishevelled leaves creep down Upon that bank to-day,Some green, some yellow, and some pale brown; The wet bents bob and sway;The once warm slippery turf is sodden Where we laughingly sat or lay. The summerhouse is gone, Leaving a weedy space;The bushes that veiled it once have grown Gaunt trees that interlace,Through whose lank limbs I see too clearly The nakedness of the place. And where were hills of blue, Blind drifts of vapour blow,And the names of former dwellers few, If any, people know,And instead of a voice that called, “Come in, Dears,” Time calls, “Pass below!”

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About Me

Kevin M. Anderson is a geographer and philosopher who is the coordinator of the AWU - Center for Environmental Research. Kevin has studied at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania [BA], Durham University, England, Ohio University [MA] where he taught philosophy and symbolic logic for several years. He received his Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Texas at Austin with a dissertation entitled: Marginal Nature: Urban Wastelands and the Geography of Nature. His environmental career began on a Pennsylvania farm raising chickens, pigs, and purebred Black Angus cattle, and it has since ranged from running an organic farm in Potomac, Maryland to starting a river conservation foundation in Northeastern Hungary as a Peace Corps Volunteer. He is a co-founder and president of the Texas Riparian Association.